TheRightsWriter.com
Member
- Joined
- May 17, 2010
- Messages
- 58
Barack Obama’s coterminous policies of apologetic weakness abroad and guilt-riddled self-loathing at home have just made the United States the victim of a baseless lawsuit filed by a foreign government — one that seems destined to further drain the wallets of the shrinking number of Americans still working.
For decades, the Left has claimed that if America atoned for our past sins, the “international community” would in turn respect us and treat us kindly. More realistic analysts warned the world would interpret this as weakness and pounce like tigers on a wounded hyena. Obama’s international apology has just proven us right. On October 1, Obama apologized to Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom for medical experiments conducted in the 1940s and approved by both governments. To be sure no nation missed the spectacle, Obama had the moment immortalized in a PR photo.Hillary Clinton, Kathleen Sebelius, and then-White House spokesmanRobert Gibbs beat their breasts and begged pardon. This author was the only conservative who reported on it at the time, forecasting Guatemalans would demand reparations and that the money “will probably be forthcoming.”
The Associated Press reported yesterday, “Attorneys representing potentially thousands of Guatemalans who were affected by U.S. syphilis experiments decades ago said Tuesday they will sue top federal health officials unless a system is created out of court to settle claims by the victims or their survivors.”
What do you think inspired these foreigners to demand your tax dollars? “The administration’s apologetic tone led the Guatemalans’ attorneys to seek the unusual out-of-court settlement before a lawsuit is filed,” according to the AP. (Emphasis added.) Guatemalan shakedown artists are demanding Obama “waive any sovereign immunity defenses to block the Guatemalan claims or, as an alternative, they want a claims process similar to those set up in the Gulf of Mexico oil spill and the 9/11 terror attacks.”
Or more to the point Pigford, Pigford II, and the whole constellation of stealth reparations payments this administration has made to black, American Indian, Hispanic, and female “farmers.”
The Central American lawsuit/shakedown “would include not only those directly involved in the research but also their relatives and survivors.” Guatemalan lawyers gave the president until Friday to comply with their demands.
The absurdity of this litigation can scarcely be overstated. From 1946-48, the U.S. Public Health Service oversaw a medical experiment designed to "test the effectiveness of penicillin" in treating syphilis by infecting nearly 700 Guatemalan prisoners,soldiers, and mental patients with the disease, then treating them.
Such experiments were genuinely inhumane, vicious, and reprehensible. And the Guatemalan government authorized them completely.
Jake Tapper of ABC News reported, "The study also was sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, a forerunner of the Pan American Health Organization, and the Guatemalan government."(Emphases added.) Susan Reverby, the Wellesley College professor who discovered the experiments last January, wrote, "Permissions were gained from the [Guatemalan] authorities but noti ndividuals, not an uncommon practice at the time."
Even the AP points out: “The American team convinced officials at orphanages and prisons to cooperate by giving them other supplies such as refrigerators and difficult-to-get medications for malaria and epilepsy. Sometimes, individual subjects were paid with cigarettes and, in the case of prisoners, infected prostitutes were used to expose them to the disease, according to court documents.” (Emphases added.)
Not only did the Guatemalan government sponsor the experiments, but it apparently did not treat those it knew to be infected. As I noted last fall, the Guatemalan guinea pigs would have been covered by the national health care system created by self-described "spiritual socialist" Juan Jose Arevalo Bermejo and expanded by his Marxist successor, Jacobo Ãrbenz Guzman — a system not altogether unlike the collectivist system our present leaders would like to impose upon us against our will. Although the government knew whom had been infected, it allowed them to suffer without treatment.
This is perhaps the most totalitarian danger of a national health care program. Many of us have argued that a government that can deny its subjects medical care can decide, in Robert Reich’s clarifying words, “We’re going to let you die.” We may point out: that death need not be quick, painless, or naturally contracted. Could Americans be used as human test subjects under a government health care system? The question is frightening.
So, too, is the president’s weakness. Barack Obama chose to grovel before his Guatemalan counterpart and apologize for experiments both their governments approved long before either man was born. That mea culpa has earned the United States an ultimatum from a Third World country (which should be suing Obama for trying to reinstate Marxist narcoterrorist Manuel Zelaya as president of neighboring Honduras). It could easily result in another fraud-ridden shakedown, this time benefiting people who are not American citizens, were not the subjects of these tests, and whose family members were betrayed by the very government now petitioning us for redress of grievances.
One could expect nothing else from a president obsessed with “our tragic history.” But we should expect much more of our leaders.
For decades, the Left has claimed that if America atoned for our past sins, the “international community” would in turn respect us and treat us kindly. More realistic analysts warned the world would interpret this as weakness and pounce like tigers on a wounded hyena. Obama’s international apology has just proven us right. On October 1, Obama apologized to Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom for medical experiments conducted in the 1940s and approved by both governments. To be sure no nation missed the spectacle, Obama had the moment immortalized in a PR photo.Hillary Clinton, Kathleen Sebelius, and then-White House spokesmanRobert Gibbs beat their breasts and begged pardon. This author was the only conservative who reported on it at the time, forecasting Guatemalans would demand reparations and that the money “will probably be forthcoming.”
The Associated Press reported yesterday, “Attorneys representing potentially thousands of Guatemalans who were affected by U.S. syphilis experiments decades ago said Tuesday they will sue top federal health officials unless a system is created out of court to settle claims by the victims or their survivors.”
What do you think inspired these foreigners to demand your tax dollars? “The administration’s apologetic tone led the Guatemalans’ attorneys to seek the unusual out-of-court settlement before a lawsuit is filed,” according to the AP. (Emphasis added.) Guatemalan shakedown artists are demanding Obama “waive any sovereign immunity defenses to block the Guatemalan claims or, as an alternative, they want a claims process similar to those set up in the Gulf of Mexico oil spill and the 9/11 terror attacks.”
Or more to the point Pigford, Pigford II, and the whole constellation of stealth reparations payments this administration has made to black, American Indian, Hispanic, and female “farmers.”
The Central American lawsuit/shakedown “would include not only those directly involved in the research but also their relatives and survivors.” Guatemalan lawyers gave the president until Friday to comply with their demands.
The absurdity of this litigation can scarcely be overstated. From 1946-48, the U.S. Public Health Service oversaw a medical experiment designed to "test the effectiveness of penicillin" in treating syphilis by infecting nearly 700 Guatemalan prisoners,soldiers, and mental patients with the disease, then treating them.
Such experiments were genuinely inhumane, vicious, and reprehensible. And the Guatemalan government authorized them completely.
Jake Tapper of ABC News reported, "The study also was sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, a forerunner of the Pan American Health Organization, and the Guatemalan government."(Emphases added.) Susan Reverby, the Wellesley College professor who discovered the experiments last January, wrote, "Permissions were gained from the [Guatemalan] authorities but noti ndividuals, not an uncommon practice at the time."
Even the AP points out: “The American team convinced officials at orphanages and prisons to cooperate by giving them other supplies such as refrigerators and difficult-to-get medications for malaria and epilepsy. Sometimes, individual subjects were paid with cigarettes and, in the case of prisoners, infected prostitutes were used to expose them to the disease, according to court documents.” (Emphases added.)
Not only did the Guatemalan government sponsor the experiments, but it apparently did not treat those it knew to be infected. As I noted last fall, the Guatemalan guinea pigs would have been covered by the national health care system created by self-described "spiritual socialist" Juan Jose Arevalo Bermejo and expanded by his Marxist successor, Jacobo Ãrbenz Guzman — a system not altogether unlike the collectivist system our present leaders would like to impose upon us against our will. Although the government knew whom had been infected, it allowed them to suffer without treatment.
This is perhaps the most totalitarian danger of a national health care program. Many of us have argued that a government that can deny its subjects medical care can decide, in Robert Reich’s clarifying words, “We’re going to let you die.” We may point out: that death need not be quick, painless, or naturally contracted. Could Americans be used as human test subjects under a government health care system? The question is frightening.
So, too, is the president’s weakness. Barack Obama chose to grovel before his Guatemalan counterpart and apologize for experiments both their governments approved long before either man was born. That mea culpa has earned the United States an ultimatum from a Third World country (which should be suing Obama for trying to reinstate Marxist narcoterrorist Manuel Zelaya as president of neighboring Honduras). It could easily result in another fraud-ridden shakedown, this time benefiting people who are not American citizens, were not the subjects of these tests, and whose family members were betrayed by the very government now petitioning us for redress of grievances.
One could expect nothing else from a president obsessed with “our tragic history.” But we should expect much more of our leaders.
